Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out Concert: A West Coast Reunion and Unforgettable Haters’ Ball

INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 19: Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during The Pop Out – Ken & Friends Presented by pgLang and Free Lunch at The Kia Forum on June 19, 2024 in Inglewood, California.Photo by Timothy Norris/Getty Images for pgLang, Amazon Music, & Free Lunch

4:31 p.m.

Hed brings out local Inglewood cult hero Rucci and AzChike to perform “Light It Up.” These two—along with Drakeo, Shoreline Mafia, 03 Greedo (who later said he was invited but couldn’t make it, and whose style would be evoked on stage by Wallie the Sensei), and a host of others—represented, toward the end of the 2010s, an emerging L.A. avant-garde that also seemed poised to cross over. Deaths, incarcerations, and the whims of streaming and radio slowed a lot of this momentum. And still, it’s surreal to see the BlueBucksClan rap about stealth Prada where the Showtime Lakers used to play.

5:02 p.m.

Hed’s cast skews contemporary until he brings out the dance legend Tommy the Clown, who stalks around the stage with typical authority while a coterie of young dancers scythe through the drum patterns of mostly recent songs—until Suga Free’s “Why U Bullshittin?” elicits a roar from the arena. Beside me: a couple in Death Row shirts and black N95s.

5:23 p.m.

Mustard comes out to pyrotechnics and, confusingly, a few bars of “Back That Azz Up.” From there he spends a while doing an out-of-the-box set: “Rack City,” “I’m Different,” “Show Me,” and “I Don’t Fuck With You.” Collaborators come out for a pair of songs each—Blxst and Steve Lacy hear warm welcomes, Ty Dolla $ign a bigger pop for “Paranoid”—and none, up to and including Tyler, the Creator, are quite as rapturously received as Dom Kennedy, whose “My Type of Party” brings the Forum to a fever pitch. The back half of the set is an extended tribute to Nipsey Hussle, which is augmented by a Roddy Ricch appearance, and a mini-set from YG which, one imagines, he might have made career-spanning if there were anything in the back half of his career that fans cared to hear.

6:13 p.m.

“Fuck Wit Dre Day” plays on the house speakers between sets, in case anyone was worried this wasn’t about to get pointed.

6:17 p.m.

Well: “Stan.”

6:33 p.m.

As Guru said, it’s mostly the voice. For as unique as Kendrick, or any number of rappers who touched the stage tonight sound, there is no one quite like E-40. The last time I interviewed him, late last year, we were riding in an SUV from downtown L.A. to SoFi Stadium, which shares a parking lot with the Forum. Somewhere on the 110, he told me: “L.A. and the Bay have always been family. That’s what’s beautiful about it: You’d assume that we would have some type of war or something, but we never let that happen because we’re all family.” The back half of his pre-recorded intro to Kendrick’s set is drowned out by screams.

6:41 p.m.

When I moved to L.A. more than a decade ago, I worked at what was then called the Staples Center, and, since then, I have regularly covered shows at virtually every venue in the city; I’ve seen rap concerts of every conceivable size, ambition, and level of execution. And still, I’ve never heard a room get quite as loud as the Forum did in the silence following “Euphoria,” Kendrick’s scorched-earth opener. I saw and heard people rap every lyric—except for the new ones, which referenced Pac, and Drake’s ridiculous AI gambit.